Star Science Fiction 6 - [Anthology] Read online

  Forbes went to the staff car for a package from the back seat. He put it under his arm and walked slowly toward the building. Prann followed a few paces behind. Gordon followed behind Prann.

  Inside the building, Gordon could see Prann picking his way through wrecked furniture that littered the central lane of the big room. A swath of destruction had flung all sorts of furniture into the side displays. Lamps and mirrors had been broken, but not all of them. Some of the lamps were still burning, providing a weak illumination. Gordon stood for a moment, astounded. So much destruction! He wondered what had caused it all. Prann stopped. Gordon came up beside him, looking ahead. He saw Forbes picking his way through the debris carefully so as to avoid any noise. Near the end of the room he stopped, then backed away carefully to remove the contents of the package under his arm.

  “What’s he doing?” Gordon leaned over and whispered in Prann’s ear.

  “Hush,” said Prann. Whispering close to Gordon’s ear, he said, “It’s a clown costume—like one that I used on a TV program the little girl likes. Forbes thinks it will ease her mind when she sees it. Then he can talk some sense in her.”

  Forbes finished donning the costume and began to walk slowly toward the last model bedroom.

  “The child must be in there,” whispered Prann to Gordon. “Come on.”

  Gordon followed Prann to a concealed place behind a tall china closet that had been just out of the path of destruction. It hid both the men adequately. They could see Forbes approaching the little girl lying in a rumpled bed. He had a clown mask on his face, wrinkled and distorted from being tied up in the package.

  Near the edge of the bed, Forbes began to whisper, “Jill, Jill—”

  Prann gave a grunt and moaned, cursing softly to himself. Gordon snapped his head around to look at him. Prann’s eyes were opaque. His face turned very white; he looked as if he were going to be ill again.

  Something had happened.

  Gordon poked his head around the corner of the china closet again, and stopped breathing. Jill was standing upright in the bed. A look of utter fright twisted her little features. She had her two dolls locked under her arms. Forbes, in his clown costume, was standing stiff and unnatural with his arms held high. The mask dropped off his face. Then he turned slightly and Gordon got a look at his face. It was strangely contorted, veins standing out all over it, trying to burst. His eyes bulged. Something came from his nostrils—smoke! Then—with a horrifyingly perverse ludicrousness—smoke came from his ears, and his body twisted completely around and fell.

  A second later Gordon was certain Forbes was dead. The body burned, sending up volumes of smoke and vapor. In a moment there were only charred remains, hardly recognizable as those of a human being.

  Gordon’s gaze turned from the remains of Forbes to the little girl. Then he screamed. He realized with deadly sureness that the sound was giving away his position— that he too might be blasted by whatever had destroyed Forbes. But at the moment he didn’t care. When he could look up again, he saw that the little girl had fainted. Prann rushed from behind the china closet and was lifting the little girl in his arms.

  “Gordon!” Prann shouted.

  Gordon wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and then walked weakly toward Prann. He was careful not to look at the corpse. But he forgot to hold his breath, and when he got close to it he first retched and then ran past as quickly as his rubbery legs would let him. He stared at Prann, unable to speak.

  “Gordon! For God’s sake, go get something to put her to sleep. If we can keep her unconscious—”

  Prann did not finish. Gordon thought dazedly of knocking her out with a blow on the head. But he was still weak; it was hard to think; probably Prann didn’t mean that. He stumbled out toward the staff car. He leaned against it for support and pointed toward the store entrance, the two airmen looking at him strangely.

  “Prann wants something to put her to sleep,” he managed to say.

  The two airmen looked at each other, then the driver started toward the building. But before he was halfway there Prann appeared, running and white-faced.

  “Gone!” he shouted. “She’s gone—and she’s frightened!”

  “Where did she go?” one of the men demanded.

  “How in the hell do I know? But that’s not the worst of it. She’s afraid—afraid of the dark.”

  Gordon shook his head, bewildered.

  “She’s afraid of the dark,” repeated Prann, sweat running down his face. “She might do anything!”

  As if to confirm the man’s words, a low building halfway down the block started rumbling. Then it began to explode —in slow motion, as if a giant fist inside it were opening up, forcing the roof and the walls outward. There was a tearing sound of wood and metal, mingling with the bass groan of tortured brick. The walls forced their way in four directions, piling against the adjacent buildings, and filling the street in front. The roof tried to collapse—but it couldn’t. Instead, it flew upward with unnatural violence, sending beams and plaster and tile in every direction but downward.

  Prann and Gordon ducked behind the car; the two airmen dived inside it. In moments the last brick had fallen, and Prann and Gordon stepped from behind the vehicle to look toward the demolished building. The light was poor. Sparks flashed from severed power lines climbing toward a pole. A fire hydrant that had been in front of the building was sheared off and spouting a geyser of water. Gordon could hear the hiss of escaping water.

  Unwisely, one of the men in the vehicle snapped on the spotlight. He swung it toward where the building had stood. Then—everyone held his breath. There was complete silence.

  The light beam held in its brilliance the figure of the little girl. She was silent, and her little features too far away to distinguish details. But Prann could imagine her little face contorted with fear and childish hostility. She stood outlined in the brilliant light a moment, statuesque, —until the light melted! The airmen cursed and jumped. The lamp inside burst and the incandescent stump glowed, lighting up the area and splattered molten metal. It faded slowly to a cherry red, dulled—then was covered by darkness.

  Someone moaned and cursed. Once again the odor of burning flesh made Gordon ill.

  “My whole damned arm!” one of the men sobbed.

  “For God’s sake, help me!” screamed the other voice. Then the cry was choked off.

  Gordon stood near Prann. He could hear the scientist breathing loudly, mumbling helplessly to himself.

  One of the airmen stumbled weakly back to the command car and lifted the microphone off its hook, one of his arms dangling uselessly.

  “Help!” he spoke into the mike faintly. “Help!”

  The loudspeaker in the vehicle came to life. It said, “Colonel Battin? Colonel Battin? What’s wrong?”

  “The colonel’s dead. Everything’s crazy. Come here, won’t you? Please!” the airman said.

  “Who is this? Where are you? What’s happened?” the loudspeaker boomed.

  “Come to us! We’re dying!” shouted the airman excitedly. Then he dropped the microphone and slumped, panting.

  Gordon looked on helplessly; there was nothing he could do. He heard a crackle of fire and saw new flames starting in the building down the block. The girl had disappeared. Smoke was coming from somewhere else across the street. Gordon turned back and saw Prann dragging the unconscious airman to the command car. Prann pushed the man into the back seat, slammed the door, leaned over to the man in the front seat and said: “Can you drive this thing out of here? Can you make it to the cordon? There’s first aid there.”

  Gordon started around the side of the vehicle to the driver’s side. He said, “I’ll take them.”

  Prann shouted, “No! I want you to come with me.” He leaned over to the airman who was struggling to get into the driver’s seat, and said once again, “Can you?”

  The airman muttered thickly, “My arm. . . .”

  “Try!” shouted Prann. To Gordon he said: “It’s
my problem now. I’m going to get her. Will you come?” Without waiting for an answer he started off into the night.

  Gordon hesitated a moment, then started following Prann. He caught up with the man and fell in step beside him. For a few minutes they picked their way through the wreckage of the building that filled the street. Smoke obscured their vision and made their eyes sting. Both men coughed. They walked in water up to their ankles as they passed the wrecked fire hydrant. Gordon wondered about the broken power lines, hoping they would not encounter any of the open lines. He wanted to tell Prann they should keep out of the water, but the man was moving forward with determined purpose. When they had cleared the debris, Gordon asked, “Where is she?”

  Prann did not answer. He was deep in thought.

  * * * *

  V

  They walked through the streets until they came to a low brick building giving off from within the soft glow of fluorescent lights from nearly every window. Prann stopped and Gordon stopped with him. There was a bench in front of the building facing a small fountain that was not spouting water. Prann and Gordon sat down together.

  “I’m glad you came along, Gordon,” said Prann. His face looked years older than it had minutes before. “This will blow the lid off the whole project. Print the story. Then the people will find out what we’re doing—what we’ve been doing,” he corrected himself. “How can you explain wrecked buildings in different parts of the town in terms of one delayed action dust bomb? And the deaths of the colonel, and Dr. Forbes—andhow they died? Maybe others,” he added, remembering the airmen in the car who was burned by the molten metal of the spotlight. “Tell them everything, Gordon. Then maybe no one else will ever attempt to accelerate a process that God is trying to do slowly.”

  Prann sighed and pointed to the building across the grass. “She’s in there, I think.”

  “How do you know?” asked Gordon.

  “I’m a telepath,” said Prann simply.

  Gordon wanted to ask Prann a thousand wild, irrelevant questions—what it was like to read the minds of men. And if he could catch the rudimentary thoughts of dogs and rats and fish and spiders. And, thinking of Dr. Forbes and Colonel Battin, what it was like to have his mind linked with the mind of a man dying a violent death. ...

  “She could be in a book store, but I don’t think so,” said Prann thoughtfully. “The arrangement of the books as I can see them through her mind makes me sure it’s that building. The library.”

  “What in God’s name are you going to do?” asked Gordon.

  “In God’s name, I don’t know,” said Prann. “It was our original plan to drug her if necessary until we could do something—talk her out of it, who knows?” he said bitterly. “What can you do with a child like that?”

  Prann stopped for want of adequate words. Then he went on.

  “Gordon, you don’t know what it is to go into the mind of a child. It’s bad enough to read an adult. But a child is much worse. Their minds sometimes have cold, uncontrollable furies that . . .” Again he stopped. “But not always. I’ve grown to love Jill.” There was tenderness in his words. He was silent a bit.

  “Gordon, I think I love Jill as much as if she were my own child. I have known her since she was two years old. I’ve lived with her and taught her. Listened to her sing and cry, laugh and scold. And I’ve watched her psi powers grow. God knows, I should have stopped them. But I was fascinated by them—and her.”

  “What is she?” asked Gordon.

  “Jill is a freak,” said Prann. “A psionic freak.”

  Gordon nodded. “I know. Telepathy. Psychokinesis. Clairvoyance. That sort of thing.”

  “They are the glamorous ones,” Prann agreed. “The well-known ones. There are dozens of others, some so subtle they are almost undetectable. And there are others so strong and violent. . . .”

  He paused, his face that of a hanged man.

  “Normally a psionic will have only one talent. Sometimes even that does not amount to much—maybe a tele-path can read ten per cent of the time, or only in times of stress. Or a PK can operate under only certain conditions, or influence only a few grams of matter a few inches. But, occasionally, there comes one who is—different, stronger. One, let’s say, who can read minds whenever he chooses, or a PK who can influence a dozen pounds of matter, or a teleport who can send himself a distance of a hundred yards. No one knows what the limits can really be. Each generation seems to bring forth some additional power in psionics. And there are a few people who have two talents, duo-talented, we call them. Their talents are always related, such as psychokinesis and teleportation. Or precognition and clairvoyance. They are invariably people whose talents are greater and stronger. It is believed that the power of one talent reinforces the other. But the one common thing to all duo-talented people is—was, I should say—that talents are not maturated until the person is an adult. All except Jill. She is a child psionic, and the only one I know.”

  “Oh, I begin to see,” said Gordon. “Being a child, you are having trouble trying to channel the talents she has.”

  “It’s not as simple as that,” said Prann dully. “Jill is multi-talented. The only one born as far as we know. She is a PK and a teleport as well as a levitant. She is also a pyrophoric, a rare and a powerful talent. And her four talents give her a power whose limitations we can only guess at.”

  Gordon’s mind was whirling, trying to square what Prann had just said with what had happened to Forbes and the colonel and the disintegration of the building and the melting of the spotlight. If that represented only a part of the power Jill had—then indeed,what were her limitations?

  “Where do you fit in?” Gordon asked Prann.

  “When Jill’s parents discovered that she was abnormal, they had to commit her to an institution. Then the government became interested in her talents. And since she was just a child, her case gave, rise to complications.” He shrugged.

  “You can’t reason with a child as you can with an adult. A child psychologist was needed. I was chosen for the project because of—my talents. As I told you, I am a tele-path. And it has been extremely difficult the last few years to keep the child from tearing the Institution apart, or burning it up. Dr. Forbes was the psineuro-psychiatrist assigned to study Jill—for studying her was our project, with emphasis on developing and accelerating her talents.”

  “Was,” he repeated thoughtfully, and was silent for a second. Then he went on.

  “Other than her talents, she is a normal, healthy child, with a child’s usual passions and tantrums and inhumaneness. If you have any children, you know what devilment they are capable of. Only ... Jill can get away with anything she wants to. How can you punish a child who can disappear? Or can burn the clothes off you—and laugh while doing it? We had no choice between the reward and punishment methods of guiding her behavior. It had to be reward—but Jill soon tired of rewards. And when we attempted punishments, they excited her. Most of the time she was a sweet kid—but when she wasn’t, she was a hellish little monster.”

  “What has all that to do with all this?” asked Gordon.

  “Jill became bored. She got fed up with it all. She could not associate with other children. And so, this afternoon she TP’d herself out of the Institute and headed toward this town. There was no way we could stop her. I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner.”

  “Then—that was a fake bomb?”

  Prann nodded.

  “I begin to see,” said Gordon. “You couldn’t very well evacuate the townspeople because a little girl was headed this way.”

  “Hardly,” said Prann, with a grim smile. “But knowing the facts that we know, it was imperative that the town be evacuated.”

  “What are you going to do now?” asked Gordon.

  “Jill has to be stopped,” Prann said, hesitating. “By this if necessary.” And he pulled a revolver out of his pocket.

  “I don’t want to use it,” he said. “But what else can I do? She’s dange
rous. You’ve seen that! Children just don’t know what adult love is, can’t comprehend it,” he added desperately.

  * * * *

  Gordon stared at him in the semi-darkness looking for signs of madness. He saw none. He looked at the revolver ami said, “You don’t mean it?”

  Prann shook his head helplessly. “If there is some other way—if God could show me some other way...”

  He let the words trail off unfinished. “What she could do if she got loose in the world with this power? What couldn’t she do! She is a child! It’s her life against many, and her talents are just beginning!”

  Gordon thought he understood. He had three children of his own. What damage and disaster could they do if they were multi-talented and were loosened on the world? He shuddered to think about it. But he loved them—as only a parent can love a child. And he knew without thinking about it twice that he would die for any of them, if it were a matter of their lives or his. He abruptly shut out that line of thought.